If ever there was a valid application of monopoly abuse laws, it is Apple's extortion for no value provided. Saying that as a blue blooded iFan who owns one of nearly every Apple product and service out there including the Apple Cloth. It is disgusting what Apple is doing. And it makes no sense that it is getting away with it. And if Google is doing the same, well then both need to be set right.
Fresh looks inspired by Remix. Is that right? Not that there is anything wrong with that. But given that Remix does claim to be production ready, what makes Fresh better?
I have been playing with Remix in a side project. I do like their simplicity vis-a-vis Nextjs. And the fact that it is all server rendered by design and not as a special case.
I don't think that fresh is better or worse, besides being pretty early in development, is somehow different and it doesn't run in node.js, but in deno.
First off, being a "monopoly" (dominant market share) does not make one a "despot blinded by hubris" as the OP suggests. Anti-trust laws target "abuse" of monopoly.
Secondly, YC may very well be a "new age monopoly" much like Google or Amazon or Facebook i.e. the customers of those companies (in YC's case - founders) gravitate to them not because there is no choice but the value that they offer is so far above and beyond any competition that exists today. The point to note is - traditional definitions of monopoly abuse don't apply, unlike for example: Apple extorting 30% from app devs, which is a blindingly obvious case of abuse.
YC just put out a superior product for their customers who'd otherwise have to pitch to 20 other angels. If you consider YC like the Amazon marketplace, this new deal can be considered a new private label (like AmazonBasics). It is quite likely that this hurts the economics of some angels. But YC is still makings it primary customers happy.
And talking about superior products, by virtue of its early stage and program design, YC does in fact add substantial value when your company is most vulnerable and needs the most help. A16Z/Sequoia/etc founders, are happy with the money and the short lived legitimacy the branded money confers.
But most YC founders seem to owe their existence to YC i.e. they love YC like an alma mater, which is exactly how YC positions itself. No angel/fund can compete with that emotional connect with checkbooks. Soon YCG will be giving later stage VCs a run for their money.
Disclaimer: I am a yc alum. YC is far from a guarantee of success as my dying company can testify. And they are quick to remind that the Harvard analogy doesn't go very far because the median YC company is still a dead one.
> YC just put out a superior product for their customers who'd otherwise have to pitch to 20 other angels.
This phrasing could imply that YC offer something that any entrepreneur can access - in other words, an unbiased funding source that is equally accessible to people regardless of background and experience.
Is that what you intended or could you find a better analogy?
Well, cost of doing business. So it’s not perfect, nothing is. But is it still a better store of value than your bank and pension which you may not realize, but are getting robbed by the Robinhoods you voted to power to replace the manchild?
I am an gadget fan. I wouldn’t be caught dead with an Android or a Windows thingy in my hand.
Also a small dev. Here is the thing. Apple offers no revenue promise when I publish my app on iOS. If I don’t figure out how to market my app, it will just sit there and rot.
But as soon as someone buys my app, I have to pay 15% to Apple. What for?
It did NOT help me get my customer. If my app gets featured then may be I ll pay for the purchase bump. But what if I don’t want to be featured if it’s not worth the cut.
I am paying plain and simple because Apple has the key to my customers phone. Where I come from, that shit is called extortion.
> But as soon as someone buys my app, I have to pay 15% to Apple. What for?
Is this a trick question? It is the same walled garden model that game consoles have always had; have you noticed that most apps in the iOS store are games?
You'll run into the same sort of thing if you want to list your app/game on PSN, Microsoft Store for Xbox, Nintendo eShop - even Google Play, Steam, and Epic game store charge commissions, and brick and mortar stores add markup - the manufacturer or distributor rarely receives the full retail price that the customer pays.
The markup or commission exists so that the platform owner (or the retailer) can make money, some of which they use to invest in the platform, operate the store, pay their employees, pay dividends to investors, or just accumulate into a giant Scrooge McDuck-type pile of cash.
exactly - this, rather than the %-cut that apple takes, is my real concern.
I do not like that apple can dictate what app i get to run on my iphone. It's not that i want to abolish the app store - for non-technical users, the appstore is fine as it is.
But there should be an option to side-load an app. There should be an option to hook into a separate store like how android has f-droid. The store-front can compete on features, rather than by apple's decree.
The 15%-cut in app-royalties apple takes is a red-herring. It gives apple an "out" when discussing this issue. It prevents further conversation of opening up the device for competing app-stores.
You are being Pedantic. Yes, we all know it is commission. The iDevices are in effect portable computers. As Android and Sailfish run devices show us, nothing should stop Apple from allowing us to install and run softwares from outside their app store. The only reason to do so is to control our devices (they can disable any app, or even the whole device and make it unusable) and ofcourse greed to also gauge even more money from other developers.
The comparison with other closed devices, like gaming consoles, just attempts to divert focus away from Apple who is the most abusive in its attempt to control and dictate the apps that run on its platform. Obviously if developers are unhappy with Apple and Microsoft and Google's App store, they are also unhappy with the closed systems of consoles. And yes, what developers are criticising and demanding from Apple also applies to everyone else too.
In what way is apple any more 'abusive' than microsoft, sony, or nintendo are? What difference does it make, legally, whether the iDevices are 'portable computers' or not? Why shouldn't a private business be allowed to control what third party software it allows on its platform? There's no misrepresentation to the customer, and the customer has other options if they aren't happy with it. Naturally the developers want to keep more money (motivated by the same fundamental drive - greed), but again, if they consider it uncommercial they don't have to release anything on ios and develop for android only.
Obviously they don't, because they won't make any money - but it's disingenuous to pretend that apple's dominance of the mobile application market and its ability to produce the best consumer hardware and software is a fact distinct from the way it has structured its business and revenue. Developers benefit from apple's strengths and relation with its customers. It's a fantasy to pretend that disruption to the model will simply rearrange the bottom line without doing structural damage to the entire endeavor.
> Why shouldn't a private business be allowed to control what third party software it allows on its platform?
There's this thing called "consumer rights" that exists to ensure corporates do not screw us with their products and services. That's why.
> There's no misrepresentation to the customer,
The consumer is being lied to here that this is all being done to protect their privacy where as the actual objective is to even more intrusively spy on its users through these controls, and use this data to exploit them more. And this control also works to exploit developers.
> ... and the customer has other options if they aren't happy with it.
That already assumes that corporates have more more rights over their products than their consumers who pay to own it. If a product is owned by a customer, they should be able to do what they want with it as they are the owners.
> Developers benefit from apple's strengths and relation with its customers.
No, they absolutely don't. Developers benefit better when they strengthen their own relationship with the customers, without Apple as a middleman dictating terms to them and charging them exorbitantly for the same. Apple even goes to the extent of limiting functionalities, to retain its control.
> It's a fantasy to pretend that disruption to the model will simply rearrange the bottom line without doing structural damage to the entire endeavor.
That's a huge exaggeration. Even otherwise, it doesn't matter if said disruption sinks Apple. Another will take their place.
"Consumer rights" is nebulous and meaningless in this context. No legal right is being infringed upon. It is not against the law for a private business to control its platforms, in fact its something that private businesses routinely do and have done long before apple came along.
Marketing and PR is also unremarkable and not peculiar to apple. iPhone customers are absolutely not being lied to in the relevant sense - there is no representation that an iPhone will allow you to run any software outside that approved by apple in the app store.
"The customer should be able to do whatever they like" is a nice sounding dogma, but has no legal basis and isn't supported by standard practice for many products. Your example only demonstrates a power imbalance if we assume that the customer has already been forced to own an iphone for some reason. In reality the corporate and the consumer have the same power - the corporate to develop and offer a product on its terms, and the consumer to either accept that offer or to purchase a different product.
Developers demonstrably do benefit from apple's strengths. Their revenues are overwhelming on the back of an ecosystem built and maintained by apple essentially from scratch. If developers didn't benefit, they wouldn't develop for ios, simple as that.
The point is, the developers are on the same boat as apple, so sinking it is a case of cutting off your nose to spite your face. And there already are 'others' - it's not apple's fault that they're shit.
What Apple is going is just obnoxious and as clear a case of anti-trust as has ever been.
30% of revenue for no services offered, just because they can, is the definition of extortion. The only thing stopping them from asking 30% off of your Amazon orders placed via Safari is because the consumer has a choice of another browser for free. Otherwise these high priests of design and aesthetics would make the shirt on your back cost 30% more.
Your app can't even tell the consumer that they can pay outside and avoid paying the Apple tax infinitely AFTER paying for their really expensive device. This is keeping the consumer in the dark to exploit them.
This isn't capitalism. This is monopoly abuse.
Haha, take your point about the tendency to "classify". There is good reason for that however: he is a VC. One of the big things that keeps VCs busy is classifying/stereotyping teams and looking for patterns of success.
Yes, he should probably keep some of these "frameworks" to himself. There isn't enough since in there to be taken seriously in a peer reviewed paper. But hey, he is PG! And there are weaklings, probably not members of his favored quadrant, who swear by his views :).
Desperate move to keep up the charade of not being a CCP shop.
On a slightly separate note, given all the virtue signaling of companies like Apple in the context of BLM, its worth reiterating that any US tech company helping the imperial CCP spy and silence its citizens is unambiguously although quite duplicitously with the dark side.
Any doubts the world had that the CCP is peace loving humans just like us, now stand well and truly shattered. They are communists and they are rich. They are more dangerous than the Soviets ever got to be.
You'd imagine the Chinese communists would be smarter having been in business for 50 years now.
But when pushed into a corner on taking the responsibility for the deadly virus, all they can think of is grabbing land and starting wars with their unfortunate neighbors.
But better sooner than later. Now you know that when the dragon becomes a super power, it will be nasty, petty, manipulative, bloody, totalitarian & downright ugly.
American capitalism propped up CCP. But CCP covets land and power more than money. And they'd rather go to war with their neighbors than accept that they were responsible for the breakout and the spread.
The only fault of TikTok, just like that of Huawei and every other Chinese company is that their ultimate masters is the CCP. And yes that's enough reason to ban them.
